Studio Voltaire brings some southern warmth to Clapham High Street

Victorian chapel on the outside,  tropical school room inside: Studio Voltaire, housed in an old Mission Hall in Nelson's Row, Clapham, is home to a truly joyful installation by Venezualan artist Sol Calero

Clapham is certainly no Hoxton, Hackney Wick, nor Camberwell when it comes to the contemporary art scene - but it has at least one outstanding art space, Studio Voltaire, which right now has an amazing installation that should bring joy to young and old alike.

Studio Voltaire occupies a former Mission Hall and Sunday school in Nelson's Row, just behind the Methodist church and only a few yards from the vomit-puddled main drag of Clapham High Street.

Its latest exhibit is an installation by a Venezualan artist, Sol Calero, which opened last week.

The work is called La Escuela del Sur, (The school of the South), and it occupies the entire hall. When you walk in you are in a space that is both familiar and (at least for a North European native) truly strange. Calero has effectively rebuilt part of a Venezualan community school classroom inside this Victorian chapel-style school-room.

On a bright day, with sun streaming in through the big church windows, the whole place glows with the primary colours of the south - yellows, oranges, greens and reds. There are huge blackboards at each end covered with gorgeously stylised patterns of natural forms, and the ceiling is painted, panel by panel, in these different primary colours, a sort of aerial Mondrian.

 Parts of the floor are painted with   geometric patterns giving the illusion of a third dimension. There are little desks and chairs set out in rows, there's an art area with easels and art and craft materials ready for use, there are tropical plants climbing up and up, some raised wooden platforms forming a sort of walkway or landing stage, and corrugated plastic roofing over parts of the room.

It all seemed heart-lifitng to me, creating the kind of environment that will invoke pleasure and excitement in children and their teachers - as opposed to the fear and oppression created by a typical Victorian English school room.

In that sense the artist has certainly achieved what (according to the press release) she's aiming for - to show that the South is well ahead of the north in its understanding of the importance of emotional intelligence. The great thing is that local schools are going to be using this space, and it's fascinating that many new British schools (at least the progressive ones) strive to create environments just as bright and cheerful as these - at least for younger kids.

There's also - again according to the press release - a deeper political message here - in that this apparently child-friendly place could simply reinforce northern prejudices that the south is somehow childish, less mature, or maybe that it does not really know about "serious" education. Maybe an Oftsed inspector would be worried that it might be hard to get kids worried about SATs  in such an environment?

The artist has also painted a series of windows on the wall, each with a view out into a stylised glimpses of a sort of tropical paradise.  Is this also a comment on (as again the press release puts it) "the carnavalising identity of the Other"?

I have no idea. It does, however remind me of another, now forever lost work of art in this area - the Mauleverer Road murals, which were destroyed earlier this year by property developers.

This massive lost mural on the wall of a former brewery included scenes of lush formal gardens, and a trompe l'oeil window opening onto a typical Caribbean beach - as if designed to remind the West Indian families living in these  terraced houses at the time (the 1970s) of what they'd left behind.

This is just a personal reaction to an amazing bit of art work. All I can say is I loved it and hope plenty of people go along before the exhibition closes on December 6.